Darrell Royal: The coach who lifted a school and a state

Updated 10:22 am, Thursday, November 8, 2012

Photo: Ralph Barrera, Associated Press

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Texas legendary head football coach Darrell K. Royal gives the "Hook'em Horns" hand gesture when he was honored Sept. 1 before the season-opening game against Wyoming in Austin. (AP Photo/Statesman.com, Ralph Barrera)

Texas legendary head football coach Darrell K. Royal gives the "Hook'em Horns" hand gesture when he was honored Sept. 1 before the season-opening game against Wyoming in Austin. (AP Photo/Statesman.com, Ralph

When Darrell Royal arrived at the University of Texas in 1957, he entered a Southwest Conference football pecking order in which SMU, TCU and Texas A&M had won national championships and each had or would within a year have Heisman Trophies on display.

Texas, at the time, had neither. In fact, when it came to handicapping the SWC, it was as common as not to list the Rice Owls, not the Longhorns, as a team with which to be reckoned when push came to shove came to November.

Over the next 20 seasons, Royal would change all that. He would win three national championships, produce Texas' first Heisman Trophy winner and, even before 140-character pronouncements became the digital soul of wit, come up with enough classic one-liners like "Ol' Ugly is better than Ol' Nothing" or "He's quick as a hiccup" to fill a book.

Many could emulate him. On occasion, some could even beat him. But as Texans mourned his death Wednesday at age 88, no one has yet been able to supplant Darrell Royal as the embodiment of what it means to excel, or everything there is to love, in the world of Texas college sports.

'Texas' team'

"He had that line about 'dance with who brung you,' " said James Street, the quarterback on Royal's second national championship team in 1969. "When it was all said and done, he was the one who brung us.

"He was the one who kept the players going and kept things going, and it goes on to this day."

His former players and Texas fans around the country learned Wednesday morning of Royal's death from what a university official said was complications of cardiac disease.

He was more than three decades removed from his coaching days at Texas (1957 until 1976) and spent the ensuing years in quiet retirement before a brief public emergence last year associated with the family's acknowledgment he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

But even after years out of the spotlight, he remains a touchstone for Longhorns football specifically and Texas college football in general.

"As the Cowboys claimed to be America's Team, Darrell made the Longhorns into Texas' team," said Dan Jenkins, the veteran writer and official historian of college football.

That being the case, one would be reserved for Royal the coach, a mixture of traditionalist and innovator.

He was famous for his aversion to the passing game (he once said, "I've always felt that three things can happen to you whenever you throw the football, and two of them are bad"), but championed assistant coach Emory Bellard's implementation of the wishbone, in which pitchouts behind the line flew with deadly abandon as the Longhorns rolled up hundreds of rushing yards per game in the late 1960s and early '70s.

"Darrell would have been happy if he didn't throw the ball once in a game," said longtime Houston sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz, whom Royal credited with naming the four-back wishbone formation.

"And yet, he was a creative guy. He would quick-kick on first down. He used Earl Campbell on the punt block team. I never knew a coach who was so curious and so interested in everything going on around him."

"He was unique as a great communicator," said Chris Gilbert, who in the 1960s became the first college running back to gain more than 1,000 yards in three consecutive seasons. "He could say more with fewer words than anybody. He could communicate with a look."

Larger than lifeFriends and admirers, however, hold more closely to the image of Royal the personality. The son of a Depression-era Dust Bowl family in Oklahoma, he was sufficiently glib to fill a book ("Dance With Who Brung Us: Quips and Quotes from Darrell Royal," compiled by Austin sportswriter Robert Heard) with museum-quality one-liners but sufficiently grounded through word and deed to inspire to this day men who knew him or played for him 30 and 40 years ago.

"When he first came along, he would try to edit his remarks after he said them," Heard said. "I told him he couldn't do that, and he replied, 'I'm not the governor.' But for most readers, what he said was more important than the governor."

"He wasn't talkative, but you hung on every word he said," Gilbert said. "He was friends with presidents and entertainers and everyday folks, and he was a lot of fun to be around."

He was not immune to controversy. The early 1970s book "Meat on the Hoof" by former Texas player Gary Shaw was critical of what Shaw described as physical abuse by coaches and trainers to run off unproductive players, and he was criticized for Texas' slow road toward racial integration; the 1969 Longhorns were the last national championship team without an African-American player, and it was not until Royal recruited Roosevelt Leaks from Brenham and Campbell from Tyler that Texas had a truly standout African-American player.

Cared about playersAnd yet Campbell, who was not available for comment Wednesday, wrote on his Facebook page, "Today I lost a father figure and great friend, Darrell Royal. You will NEVER be forgotten."

"He cared deeply about people and how people were treated," said Houston attorney Joe Jamail, for whom the playing field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is named. "He could differentiate a hunk of meat playing football for him from a human being that he cared about."

Street will always be linked with Royal through the Longhorns' 15-14 win over Arkansas in the 1969 "Big Shootout" that featured Street's fourth-down, 43-yard pass to Randy Peschel on the winning drive. But he has equally fond memories of parties at Royal's home after his playing days, listening to Willie Nelson, Larry Gatlin and Charley Pride.

"He would say 'Red light,' and when he said that, everything had to stop," Street said. "If you didn't want to sit and listen, you needed to go outside. He wasn't mean about it. He was just the coach in charge, the person in charge.

"He was so real. You can't describe how he changed the room when he walked in. Elvis could do it. Not a lot of people can. He wanted you to do things the right way because you represented your parents, your town, your school and your city, and he took responsibility. He expected you to hold up your end of the bargain."

'T' ring legacyHis legacy to his former players was the "T" ring, given to student-athletes upon graduation. Even as Alzheimer's tightened its grip in recent months, a former player wearing a "T" ring would still bring a smile and a nod from the old coach, according to Pat Culpepper, the 1960s all-conference linebacker who was perhaps the truest believer in the Royal way of football.

"This is a passing of the guard," Culpepper said. "We had a great spirit that kept us together as long as he was alive. It's going to be hard, but we will try to stay together and carry on his legacy.

"It's a legacy of excellence and high standards. As long as you wear that ring, it's what is expected of you."